A Preliminary Look Underground

June 27th, 2016

I wrapped up my last active source fieldwork last week with another three days in Fairfield - despite bringing my DSLR, I was unable to get photos of any of the wildlife out there. We did find several skittish fox when scouting out one of our dirt roads as well as a barn owl and a golden eagle pair. I've been asked a few questions about what our streamer looks like, so I thought it would be easiest just to share a photo. All of the geophones are wired through the streamer. Metal plates at each instrument help weigh the entire streamer down and allow the geophones to be screwed in to achieve coupling with the plates and the ground. There is more data aquisition to do out there, but we're resigned to waiting for good weather days now. From here on out I will be working on data processing and focusing on the active source side until mid-July.

I'm beginning to look at reflection data from our only E-W line and completing a preliminary analysis. After killing bad traces/shots and acquainting myself with common midpoint gathers, velocity analysis, and normal moveout adjustments in ProMAX, I've r an early look into the shallow subsurface below our line. The bedrock is easily followed on the west (left) side of the image but sort of loses coherency on the east side. I'll have to play around more with the data to see if I can create a better picture.

The circled area is interesting. There is definitely an unconformity there and we suspect it's an active fault (moved in the last 10,000 years) with little surface expression other than a nearby stream. If so, we're the first people to image the fault using active source techniques. I suppose this is what it feels like when research goes well!

This week I prepared a ~45 second "elevator speech" to give to someone interested in my summer research. I've already had to think about this during my fieldwork; the dirt roads we are working on see local traffic and people often stop and talk to us about what we're doing. The first few times I let others on my team answer the locals' questions and then slowly developed my own summary and got into some great conversations with ranchers about their personal experiences finding hot water in the area. I definitely became more confident through repetition and as my own understanding of our work grew. Thus developing the formal version felt easy; I took out the fieldwork details and added in a few sentences about the passive source side of our investigation and - tada! - I had a bite-sized overview of my work that I could modify slightly for different audiences. This will be useful for AGU and anytime I'm asked about what I did this summer. Despite the immense training we will receive in our field, communication skills can be left in the dust. The ability to convince someone else, lay or educated, to care about your research is what makes an effective scientist. And those grant proposals certainly don't write themselves!

I'll leave you this week with a few photos from an excursion to Jennie Lake and Peak 8610 in the Boise National Forest.

Comments

Mara - I've been enjoying your blogs (especially the pictures!) It seems quite beautiful out there. Moving indoors after fieldwork must be an interesting change of pace! I think that it's great that your fieldwork has given you the opportunity to discuss your research with a wide variety of people. This is a perhaps unanticipated benefit of doing research in more populated areas. Keep up the good work!

Fantastic pictures! Gosh Idaho is beautiful - I really need to get out there and visit my friends. Have you met Jake Anderson and Jeff Johnson yet? I really liked your thought processes and discussion of the importance of clearly articulating your science to a variety of audiences.